Nationalist transactions : Chak De! India and the down-and-out sports coach

This paper argues that Chak De! India is an ideational assemblage for the nation in its 60th year. Deploying two foundational tropes that accompanied the coming into existence of the geo-political entity called India, Chak De! India provides a contemporary anthem to the contemporary nation. These two inaugural stages in the birth of the nation that haunt Hindi cinema are replayed intermittently through its postulated resolutions: (1) the idea of the Hindu-Muslim solidarity and (2) the idea of the states of India. This paper will address the ways in which Chak De! India takes the assembling principle of a secular and plural Hindi cinema for granted and adapts it for Bollywood, particularly with regards to its principal character, Coach Kabir Khan. It will also assess how Shah Rukh Khan, the superstar who plays the role of the coach, (dis)assembles the character of the Muslim in Hindi cinema. In context of the global reach and influence of Bollywood, this paper asks how assemblages of this resolutely Indian kind may or may not travel or translate across oceanic waters.